Biggest Megafauna Grave

Biggest megafauna grave found, according to articles in ABC and BBC News and Courier Mail 21 June 2012. Scientists from Queensland Museum and Griffith University have unearthed the largest deposit of Diprotodon fossils ever found. Diprotodons are extinct giant wombat like creatures that could grow as big as a rhinoceros. The largest Diprotodon at the new site has a 70cm (28 in) jaw and the scientists estimate it was 3 metres (10 ft) tall. The scientists believe there are between 40 and 50 Diprotodon buried at the site in central Queensland. Scott Hocknull of the Queensland Museum commented: “What is really interesting to me, is that it is the largest concentration of this one gigantic marsupial that I have ever seen, anywhere in Australia”. The scientists have also found teeth from a giant lizard named meglania, and teeth and bony back-plates of an enormous crocodile. Hocknull explained: “We're almost certain that most of these carcasses of Diprotodon have been torn apart by both the crocodiles and the lizards, because we've found shed teeth within their skeletons from both animals”. The researchers also found giant kangaroos, a giant forest wallaby, along with smaller marsupials and fish and frogs. Hocknull also commented: “With so many fossils it gives us a unique opportunity to see these animals in their environment, basically, so we can reconstruct it”.

Editorial Comment: This is not an opportunity to see where these animals lived in their environment. It is an opportunity to see where they are dead and buried, and maybe find some clues as to how they were buried. Burying such a large number of giant animals required a substantial amount of sediment, which means a large regional flood during which land creatures were drowned and ended up where they didn’t live – maybe hundreds of km from their place of origin, and in a place where giant Crocs perhaps tore them apart. However, the size of these animals does tell us something about the environment wherever they lived – that it must have been better than central Queensland is now. Crocs don’t live there now – it’s too dry. Similarly for the land to support giant animals, including giant forest wallabies, there must have been more vegetation than currently exists in central Queensland. There are numerous fossils of giant animals all over Australia, and there is considerable debate as to what led to their extinction. Some claim it was human hunting, others claim it was climate change. It is interesting to note that those who want to blame climate change do not claim that it was caused by man-made carbon dioxide emissions. The extinction of the megafauna was probably the result of both human hunting and climate change. The loss of these giant animals and the drying out of the Australian continent is more testimony that the world is not evolving upwards, from simple to complex, but started out very good and is going downhill just as the Bible tells us. (Ref. wombats, marsupials, Australia)